Malazan Book of The Fallen, anyone?

M99 wrote:The are still a lot of unanswered questions at the end which is due to the insane scope of the series making it impossible to conclude and explain everything.

Firenze wrote:

M99 wrote:The are still a lot of unanswered questions at the end which is due to the insane scope of the series making it impossible to conclude and explain everything.

to be fair a lot of that stuff is being explained in his prequel trilogy atm, plus after that there will be a trilogy set after The main series with familiar characters. I thought he did a good job wrapping things up, he also had to leave a bunch of character arcs for the co-author's books (who kinda sucks lol)

M99 wrote:

Firenze wrote:

M99 wrote:The are still a lot of unanswered questions at the end which is due to the insane scope of the series making it impossible to conclude and explain everything.

to be fair a lot of that stuff is being explained in his prequel trilogy atm, plus after that there will be a trilogy set after The main series with familiar characters. I thought he did a good job wrapping things up, he also had to leave a bunch of character arcs for the co-author's books (who kinda sucks lol)

Did you read the prequel triology? How good are they?

Blue Barrett wrote:Interesting.


Also, this Dark Company you mentioned, M99, how good is that?

BarrileteCosmico wrote:I quit after book 3. I really wanted to like it, but ultimately I didn't find the characters interesting enough.

In writing Gardens, I quickly discovered that 'back story' was going to be a problem no matter how far back I went. And I realized that, unless I spoon-fed my potential readers (something I refused to do, having railed often enough at writers of fantasy epics treating us readers as if we were idiots), unless I 'simplified', unless I slipped down into the well-worn tracks of what's gone before, I was going to leave readers floundering. And not just readers, but editors, publishers, agents...

But, you know, as a reader, as a fan, I never minded floundering – at least for a little while, and sometimes for a long while. So long as other stuff carried me along, I was fine. Don't forget, I worshipped Dennis Potter. I was a fan of DeLillo's The Names and Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. The reader I had in mind was one who could and would carry the extra weight – the questions not yet answered, the mysteries, the uncertain alliances.

History has proved this out, I think. Readers either bail on the series somewhere in the first third of Gardens of the Moon, or they're still sharing the ride to this day, seven going on eight books later.

I have been asked, would I have done it any differently in hindsight? And I honestly don't have an answer to that. Oh, there are elements of style that I'd change here and there, but ... fundamentally, I'm just not sure what else I could have done. I am not and never will be a writer happy to deliver exposition that serves no other function than telling the reader about back story, history, or whatever. If my exposition doesn't have multiple functions – and I do mean multiple – then I'm not satisfied. Turns out, the more functions in it, the more complicated it gets, the more likely it will quietly shift into misdirection, into sleight of hand, and all the back story elements, while possibly there, end up buried and buried deep.

This was fast-paced writing, but it was also, bizarrely and in ways I still can't quite figure, dense writing. So, Gardens invites you to read rip-roaringly fast. But the author advises: you'd best not succumb to the temptation.

Here we are, years later now. Should I apologize for that bipolar invitation? To what extent did I shoot myself in the foot with the kind of introduction to the Malazan world as delivered in Gardens of the Moon?. And has this novel left me dancing on one foot ever since? Maybe. And sometimes, on midnight afternoons, I ask myself: what if I'd picked up that fat wooden ladle, and slopped the whole mess down the reader's throat, as some (highly successful) Fantasy writers do and have done? Would I now see my sales ranking in the bestseller's lists? Now hold on – am I suggesting that those ultra popular Fantasy writers have found their success in writing down to their readers? Hardly. Well, not all of them. But then, consider it from my point of view. It took eight years and a move to the UK for Gardens of the Moon to find a publisher. It took four more years before a US deal was finalized. The complaint? 'Too complicated, too many characters. Too ... ambitious.'

I could take the fish-eyed retrospective angle here and say how Gardens marked a departure from the usual tropes of the genre, and any departure is likely to meet resistance; but my ego's not that big. It never felt like a departure. Glen Cook's Dread Empire and Black Company novels had already broken the new ground, but I'd read all those and, wanting more, I pretty much had to write them myself (and Cam felt the same). And while my style of writing did not permit imitation (he's a terse one, is Cook), I could certainly strive for the same tone of dispirited, wry cynicism, the same ambivalence and a similar sense of atmosphere. Maybe I was aware of the swing away from Good versus Evil, but that just seemed a by-product of growing up – the real world's not like that, why persist in making Fantasy worlds so fundamentally disconnected with reality?

Well, I don't know. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

Gardens is what it is. I have no plans on revision. I don't even know where I'd start.

Better, I think, to offer the readers a quick decision on this series – right there in the first third of the first novel, than to tease them on for five or six books before they turn away in disgust, disinterest or whatever. Maybe, from a marketing position, the latter is preferred – at least in the short term. But, thank God, my publishers know a false economy when they see one.

Gardens of the Moon is an invitation, then. Stay with it, and come along for the ride. I can only promise that I have done my best to entertain. Curses and cheers, laughter and tears, it's all in here.

Arctic Swan wrote:I'm wondering if anyone has read from the shared series of the Malazan books? There is Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen - derived from Napoleon's Book of the Fallen - and his four novellas, and Ian Cameron Esslemont's Novels of the Malazan Empire? Many reviews and explanations go into great detail about the plot, but that defeats the purpose because the magic of the series comes from the sense of discovery. This might be a bad analogy, but I'll compare it to the video game Dark Souls - you are not spoonfed information. The author doesn't talk to the reader, the character talks to himself, at least to some degree. It isn't written in first person, but if the character doesn't know a name of a character, a city, a creature, or whatever, you won't know either. Another character that knows the name of said creature or character will call them by name and its up to the reader to figure out that the other character was detailing the same, just unnamed.

Without talking about the plot, this is why you should read these books:

In 1982 best friends Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont teamed up to create a campaign for a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons system. Four years they switched to the GURPS system and as a result the depth and complexity of the world grew in scale and size, much more of a fully realized world and reality. You might be thinking that this makes comparable to the Forgotten Realm universe, created by Ed Greenwood. Well, you'd be dead wrong. Both authors have degrees in archaeology and anthropology, and its apparent they used their knowledge and experience in creating and developing this unique world.

For those that aren't completely sure about the defenition of the two, let me explain why this is so important. Archaeology is the study of human activity and people, usally by recovering environmental data and material culture - an example of material culture is studying an artifact to discover its relationship to its culture - that has been left behind by said peoples and cultures. Artifacts and architecture are most well known examples of things they archaeologists study, as well as biofacts - an excavated and important object that has left by a previous human; an example would a seed to find out what type of food might have been grown or other items that can help realize what the humans might have worn or buildt with.

Anthropology is closely related in some aspects, while differing in others. While archaeology might not be defined as academic - not primarily defined as practical or useful - anthropology is. It is the academic study of the humanity. It concerns the understanding of humanity's experience throughout the ages, dealing with everything about ourselves both physical, social and cultural and how those all have evolved from their origins to now and all the time between. One of the primary focuses is to discover where we came from and how our evolution shapes and influences ourselves and our social relationships and cultures - what we do, how we act, and how we think.

Sorry if that took long to explain, but emphasis is important here. These books are set in a completely original and unique world, not our own universe. This isn't a big deal in fantasy novels or games; its pretty much garunteed. However, a lot are stale because they base themselves on cliches which might've been revolutionary when the first authors of the genre invented them, be it Tolkien, Lewis, or Peake. Another reason is that along with the fantastical and improbable or impossible setting the characters are written unrealistic, or there isn't a sense of their kind and places having history and culture. Because of their knowledge, whenever I read these Malazan books it feels like I'm seeing through the both the authors' and the characters' eyes, as well as smelling what the characters' smell and see what they see. I feel like I'm breathing in that world, feeling their culture and history all around me.

There are so many instances the authors point out dirt mounds, old roads grown over by nature, and many more examples. What makes this idea unique is they manage, by making the world so realized, that each of these has a past or story, ones that the authors might actually know and have fully developed in their heads and how they chronologicaly fit into that world. There are cities built over old, lost cities, ruins over ruins, and this concept never manages to feel like like the fantasy cliche of a ruin under a city for they build these areas by following the rules of archaeology and anthropology. For those who didn't like the longwinded and heavy prose of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - talking about the history of a place they pass or come across - don't be turned off because they manage to stay away from that problem. All this mainly deals with the archaeology experience they have, but now on to anthropology.

This is where they put all other creations and their races and cultures' to shame. The series is made up of plentiful amount of different races, all has complex as our own and some larger in scope, with plenty of variation between them as well as remaining unique compared to other fantasy races and beings. The other thing to mention about these races is their personalities and philosophies. The authors are unapologetic when it comes to realism. The peoples found throughout the series act in a way believable to their cirmumstances, war and violence are detailed but unglorified, there's political intrigues, backstabbers, and everything that makes people evil and stupid. Nowhere is there to be found a race and culture pure like the elves of Middle-Earth. They might think they are, but alas pride and arrogance are one of those evils that abound in humanity. And lastly, characters die both unexpectedly and expectedly, not following a pattern but what would really happen in such an instance.

Yes, your favorite character is most likely going to die. Get over it.

The series is compared to such great reads and George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, Glen !@#$'s The Black Company - which arguably could be the Malazan and Martin's books inspirations in terms of mood and nitty, gritty, realism - as well as Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Convenant novels - where the hero is definitely and truly flawed, like we all are. It doesn't matter what you say is better, it really comes down to whats your favorite type of tea argument. There are main commonalities are realism, but other such things are different, like a key thing that you find in Martin's books is how he goes to extreme detail on the banners, flags, sigils, ect. For those curious, when it comes to tea I prefer Earl Grey only because Jean Luc Picard does.

Oh, and for those tired of cliches in how magic works in the genre, this is another reason to read. All I will say is that Warrens are - in my humble opinion - the single greatest concept to the idea of magic in the genre in the last decade or two. That is probably going to be scoffed at off the bat, but when other layers of ideas - the Ascendants, the Deck of Dragons, the Tiles of the Holds - it makes the argument much more easy to agree with. Which you'd be right to do so. Doesn't mean I'll tell you what those three concepts are, that would ruin the magic when you read the series.

Thanks for indulging in reading this topic. I need to stop before I actually spoil things. There is two warning I have, however. Some of the biggest fans I know aren't afraid to acknolwedge that the first book published, Gardens of the Moon, isn't of the highest quality when compared to to the others. The reason for this is Erikson wrote it in 1991-92, but it published in 1999 and his style and skill developed over that expanse. Another warning is some might be put off by the two author's style or theme of "convergence". While the books are filled with exciting cirmustances, when compared to the "endgame" of each book, the other parts are slow - but only when compared to the end. This is because they follow the idea of the plotlines heading for a joint conclusion, so the tension rises throughout the entire book until the climax that unfolds over around anywhere from 100 to 200 plus pages - to quote Stephen R. Donaldson:

"Steven Erikson is an extraordinary writer. I read Gardens of the Moon with great pleasure. And now that I have read it, I would be hard pressed to decide what I enjoyed more: the richly and ominously magical world of Malaz and Genabackis; the large cast of sympathetically-rendered characters; or the way the story accumulates to a climax that hits like machinegun fire. My advice to anyone who might listen to me is, Treat yourself to Gardens of the Moon. And my entirely selfish advice to Steven Erikson is, write faster."

With that I come to a close. Once again, thanks.

Spoiler:

El Shaarawy wrote:So, i'm halfway through book 1

Spoiler:

Oh, and for those tired of cliches in how magic works in the genre, this is another reason to read. All I will say is that Warrens are - in my humble opinion - the single greatest concept to the idea of magic in the genre in the last decade or two. That is probably going to be scoffed at off the bat, but when other layers of ideas - the Ascendants, the Deck of Dragons, the Tiles of the Holds - it makes the argument much more easy to agree with. Which you'd be right to do so. Doesn't mean I'll tell you what those three concepts are, that would ruin the magic when you read the series.

Very simple explanation of Warrens & Ascendants:

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned. T'lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.